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A significant recent exception is Frank J. Hoffman, ‘Remarks on Blasphemy’Scottish Journal of Religious Studies 4 (1983): 138–151. However Hoffman's pessimism about the possibility of an adequate definition of blasphemy is, I hope to show, unjustified.
J. L. Austin,How to do Things with Words, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 42f.
See H. P. Grice, ‘Meaning’Philosophical Review 66 (1957): 377–388; ‘Utterer's Meaning, Sentence Meaning and Word Meaning’Foundations of Language 4 (1968); 255–242; ‘Utterer's Meaning and Intentions’Philosophical Review 78 (1969): 147–177; P.F. Strawson, ‘Intention and Convention in Speech Acts’Philosophical Review 73 (1964): 439–460; D. M. Armstrong, ‘Meaning and Communication’Philosophical Review 80 (1971): 427–447; Stephen R. Schiffer,Meaning (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).
The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas trans. Fathers of the English Domincan Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1916), Vol. 9, p. 167.
Hoffman,: p. 141.
Cf. Paul Reps,Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1957), p. 135.
Here I am in obvious disagreement with Hoffman's claim that ‘in objecting to idolatry one may do what the idolator regards as blasphemy… [and] there is no priviledged point of view from which to declare objectively and categorically that such-and-such is not blasphemy but only pointing out the danger of idolatry’ (p. 148).
Cf. Arthur Koestler,Darkness at Noon, trans. Daphne Hardy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1940), p. 109: ‘He found out that those processes wrongly known as “monologues” are really dialogues of a special kind; dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as “I” instead of “you”, in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions; but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation and even refuses to be localized in time and space.’
Hoffman,: pp. 138–139.
Bernard Haring,The Law of Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and Laity, trans. Edwin G. Kaiser, (Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1967), Vol. 2, p. 205.
Compare, for example, the discussion of pictorial illocutionary acts in David Novitz,Pictures and their Use in Communication (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), Ch. 4.
Matthew 12:32 and Mark 3:28–29 are often cited in support of this view.
Shusaku Endo,Silence, trans. William Johnston. (London: Peter Owen, 1976).
In Fyodor Dostoevsky,The Brothers Karamazov, the Constance Garnett translation revised by Ralph E. Matlaw (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), p. 757.
F. M. Dostoevskii,Pisma, IV (Moscow-Leningrad, 1959), pp. 56–57. (I am indebted to Dr Andrew Barratt for the translation.)
Stewart R. Sutherland,Atheism and the Rejection of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), p. 33.
Ibid.,, p. 33.
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Perret, R.W. Blasphemy. SOPH 26, 4–14 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02781167
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02781167